Vanity Fair is being accused of racism with their March 2010 magazine cover issue, showing the new hot stars and muses of Hollywood, who all happen to be white females.

While race is still a hotly debated topic in the 21st century, with "racism" being the hot iron that no-one wants to touch, it is obvious that the cover definetly lacks diversity. There are no Asian, Black or Hispanic actresses added to the 'Vanity Fair' cover (though it seems that most comments that are being made specifically talk about the lack of Black actresses).

USA Today has an article that carries some quotes from different blogs and there was one that particuarly caught my eye. It is from the ohnotheydidn't blog and it says "What does "Young Hollywood" look like? According to Vanity Fair, it's pretty, thin, female and white."

Is the Vanity Fair Magazine Cover Racist?

The Vanity Fair cover indicates more than anything just how exclusionary Hollywood and the media is; they exclude based on weight, attractiveness, and race (yes, there is still racism in 2010). Vanity Fair's magazine cover is disturbing to me for so many different reasons, and the above sentence sums it up perfectly. Everyone is thin, pretty and white. There are a lot of people on the web that have been sticking up for Vanity Fair, saying that they have choosen that demographic because those are the people that read their magazine (Vanity Fair knows I'm sure that that blanket statement is far from true but maybe they hope it to be so, like Ralph Lauren), and oh, Black people shouldn't care because they have JET and Ebony magazine to put them on the covers. I'm not going to get into a debate with myself at why these statements are idiotic and do nothing to address the issue. (Also, if you truly believe that Black magazines are wrong and only cater to black people; why would you be fine with 'Vanity Fair's' lack of diversity? Do two wrongs now make a right?). (Read the comments on Huffington Post to see what I am talking about).

Once again, I don't think this should be a White vs. Black issue, diversity is more than just black and white. Where are the Asian and Hispanic and Middle Eastern Actresses? Or is that the problem in-of-itself? How many Asian, Hispanic and Middle-Eastern actresses can we name that are making it in Hollywood right now? Is Vanity Fair's magazine cover showing the lack of diversity on behalf of Hollywood on behalf of Vanity Fair? I would say it's a bit of both- I mean why not feature Zoe Saldana or Gabby Sidibe?

This has already been said before, but it needs to be heard again. I really really really hate sticking up for Hollywood, USA, and anything related to them, but this will only ever be an issue in the USA.

Its all based on demographics and $. Not racism. Its stereo typical because thats what makes money and its what people want to see. Its the same in every other country. Japan has japanese actresses, Korea has Korean actresses, ect. They cater to what thier people are comfortable seeing.

There was an article about a yr ago that said the same thing about a movie that was made in the USA, but when it went to Austrialia, the black actor and actress was left out of the postor promoting the movie. They claimed it was for demographic reasons and catering to an all white audience as opposed to America's mixed audiance.

My point is that this isnt a problem or issue, its called business. And as long as people get educated about these things, there is no real harm done. As for those people in the 3rd world countries...forgive them for thier ignorance (like that guy who called Ophra the N word, thats probably America's fault to) :lol:. peace over war

What I find fascinating is that people here somehow wish to tell the audience what they need to see. Well, how about you leave that to the f*cking audience to determine? If I pay for films that feature females with religious symbols, revealing clothing, armour or really anything, then that means I want to see exactly that and I don't want a body of opinion to be telling me 'Oh no, you absolutely can't watch that manner of stuff. It is immoral!' People produce it and others pay for it. The whole situation couldn't be more just. I get what I paid for and the people responsible for the production get what they made the thing for: money. Last thing I need is a bunch of pressure groups re-educating me as regards the forms of entertainment I enjoy.

Vanity Fair is being accused of racism with their March 2010 magazine cover issue, showing the new hot stars and muses of Hollywood, who all happen to be white females.

While race is still a hotly debated topic in the 21st century, with "racism" being the hot iron that no-one wants to touch, it is obvious that the cover definetly lacks diversity. There are no Asian, Black or Hispanic actresses added to the 'Vanity Fair' cover (though it seems that most comments that are being made specifically talk about the lack of Black actresses).

USA Today has an article that carries some quotes from different blogs and there was one that particuarly caught my eye. It is from the ohnotheydidn't blog and it says "What does "Young Hollywood" look like? According to Vanity Fair, it's pretty, thin, female and white."

Is the Vanity Fair Magazine Cover Racist?

The Vanity Fair cover indicates more than anything just how exclusionary Hollywood and the media is; they exclude based on weight, attractiveness, and race (yes, there is still racism in 2010). Vanity Fair's magazine cover is disturbing to me for so many different reasons, and the above sentence sums it up perfectly. Everyone is thin, pretty and white. There are a lot of people on the web that have been sticking up for Vanity Fair, saying that they have choosen that demographic because those are the people that read their magazine (Vanity Fair knows I'm sure that that blanket statement is far from true but maybe they hope it to be so, like Ralph Lauren), and oh, Black people shouldn't care because they have JET and Ebony magazine to put them on the covers. I'm not going to get into a debate with myself at why these statements are idiotic and do nothing to address the issue. (Also, if you truly believe that Black magazines are wrong and only cater to black people; why would you be fine with 'Vanity Fair's' lack of diversity? Do two wrongs now make a right?). (Read the comments on Huffington Post to see what I am talking about).

Once again, I don't think this should be a White vs. Black issue, diversity is more than just black and white. Where are the Asian and Hispanic and Middle Eastern Actresses? Or is that the problem in-of-itself? How many Asian, Hispanic and Middle-Eastern actresses can we name that are making it in Hollywood right now? Is Vanity Fair's magazine cover showing the lack of diversity on behalf of Hollywood on behalf of Vanity Fair? I would say it's a bit of both- I mean why not feature Zoe Saldana or Gabby Sidibe?

This has already been said before, but it needs to be heard again. I really really really hate sticking up for Hollywood, USA, and anything related to them, but this will only ever be an issue in the USA.

Its all based on demographics and $. Not racism. Its stereo typical because thats what makes money and its what people want to see. Its the same in every other country. Japan has japanese actresses, Korea has Korean actresses, ect. They cater to what thier people are comfortable seeing.

There was an article about a yr ago that said the same thing about a movie that was made in the USA, but when it went to Austrialia, the black actor and actress was left out of the postor promoting the movie. They claimed it was for demographic reasons and catering to an all white audience as opposed to America's mixed audiance.

My point is that this isnt a problem or issue, its called business. And as long as people get educated about these things, there is no real harm done. As for those people in the 3rd world countries...forgive them for thier ignorance (like that guy who called Ophra the N word, thats probably America's fault to) :lol:. peace over war

Unfortunately in the grand scheme of things, war and ignorance brings more profit than peace and education does...if you know what I'm saying.

Slanted Screen: Asian Men in Film and Television
Written and Directed by Jeff Adachi

RECOMMENDED: 4.5 fists (out of 5)

Anyone interested in their own consciousness and how it was formed should see Slanted Screen, Jeff Adachi's look back at Hollywood's attempt to emasculate what today amounts to two thirds of the world population. Or at least half of it.

Slanted Screen, winner of the Best Short Documentary award at the NY International Independent Film & Video film festival, lives up to its double entendre name by taking us on a 60 minute time traveling trip, stopping to look at over 60 movies and tv shows that have shaped the American image of the Asian male since the era of the silent film. Many of these films are forgotten, and it's really important to see them as a foundation for newer forms of stereotyping that young people are still exposed to.

My father is a retired Asian actor, and like many of the actors depicted and interviewed in Slanted Screen he had the fortune and misfortune of playing just about every Asian stereotype you can think of: houseboy, karate chopper, Japanese tourist, Eskimo, Japanese naval officer, even Chairman Mao! Several of the actors that writer/director/producer/(and San Francisco public defender) Jeff Adachi interviews were household names when we were growing up: Sessue Hayakawa, James Shigeta, Mako. Adachi also interviews actors Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Dustin Nguyen, Phillip Rhee, Will Yun Lee, Tzi Ma, Jason Scott Lee, comedian Bobby Lee, producer Terence Chang, ascerbic writer Frank Chin, and directors Gene Cajayon and Eric Byler.

In the end, Ahachi's point is clear: it takes an entire industry from writer to producer to actor to distributor to audience to create, deconstruct, and recreate the Asian male. This is an inspiring message: we all have to pitch in. Our kids will thank us. The Slanted Screen interviews an educator who points out the harmful effect of negative stereotyping on children. This is something I can attest to. Like many people of color, I grew up suffering from the effects of "internalized racial oppression." I wanted white features, and heroes to me were white males.

The cultural institutions of entertainment are themselves created and buffered by other institutions: education, labor, law, segregation in housing, the armed services, and on and on. It all adds up to "The System". If Adachi's film falls short, it is in not tying all the historical pieces together with history itself, except in the most general sense.

For example: whereas Adachi and his interviewees show us how Asians were disempowered by emasculating the male image, what's the dynamic with African Americans. Who have been distorted by the opposite stereotype: the hyper-sexualized male image.

Actually, in order to understand "disempowerment" in all its chameleon-like forms, one has to first understand "power." According to movement historian David Billings of The People's Institutute, an anti-racist training organization, an interesting change took place in the social services in the 1970. There was a shift from looking at poverty, addictions, etc, as social ills as having social roots which must be addressed socially, to individual pathologies which had to be treated individually with counseling and drugs.

If Asians are disempowered by being de-sexualized, are African American males empowered by being hypersexualized? Of course not. Because sexual conquest has nothing to do with real power. Power is the ability to wage war, to invade another country, to form a union and win a decent wage, to cross a border when you want to, to provide for your family, to have and exercise freedom. The ability to have sex with white women, to kick a white actor's butt, to see a stereotypically handsome male on screen of your own color is NOT power.

While we might see Sidney Poitier coming home for dinner, we will not see the battalions of Black soldiers picking up arms against racist whites in the South during World War II. While we might see Bruce Lee flex his muscles we will not see the Viet Cong driving the US out of Vietnam. While we might see Antonio Banderas carve a Z with his rapier, we won't see Hugo Chavez slash a V for Venezuela into the chest of US hegemony in South and Central America.

Who are these racist movies for? They are not for people of color, primarily. People of color have for the most part managed to have their own social institutions and art forms, which were largely ignored by the white public. These racist films are really designed to "empower" white people, by putting people of color in other, more "animalistic" groups that should be detested, pitited, gawked at, but not feared, because they are ultimately inferior.

I am no expert, but I'll wager that if you measured the testosterone level of white males after watching racist movies in which the villain was a male of color, it would be higher. In reality, the Black males hypersexualized by racist white culture have historically been, and continue to be, set upon and literally emasculated by white mobs who are protected by the racist system.

Racism = racial prejudice + power

Power, then, is not simply a feeling. I am not empowered because I feel powerful, or sexy.

Asians, Africans, Latino/Mejicanos/Chicanos, Arabs, and Indigenous males are all stereotyped with a slightly different twist. Each group has been subjected to racist genocide either here or abroad. What Hollywood and mainstream tv does is to lift everyone out of context and turn the world into one steamy, lurid sexualized soap opera with the white female the prize, the victim, the ideal image, the Helen for all wars foreign and domestic.

Do you think this is intentional? Is there a hidden motive? That is another movie.

Had Adachi dipped a little deeper into the cinematic pool he could have come up with exceptions to the rule. Such as the unforgettable Toshiro Mifune in many Kurosawa films, from The Seven Samurai to Yojimbo. Or Tatsuya Nakadai, who played a complex character in a real political setting in Masaki Kobayashi's must see but seldom seen trilogy, The Human Condition, a movie that showed me how Japanese fascism worked in its army.

In one scene the young Japanese protagonist, a pacifist/socialist who is disgusted with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, talks to an old Chinese revolutionary who tells him that no matter where he goes, he will always meet someone who is in the struggle. This is a different kind of power than the fascist male stereotypes fed to the Japanese public, and helped turn it into a brutal killing machine.

We will meet these people who embody true power in films coming out of independent media, like Third World Newsreel or Paper Tiger TV. Or the other people's cinemas around the world.

New York International Asian American Film Festival The Slanted Screen plays at the New York International Asian American Film Festival on Saturday, July 15, 2006, 3:30pm. Lila Acheson Wallace Auditorium, the Asian Society, 725 Park Avenue, New York City (at 70th Street) For more information, visit www.asiancinevision.org

The Slanted Screen plays at the Long Island International Film Festival on July 17, 2006, at 1:30pm at the Bellmore Theater. For more information, visit www.longislandfilm.com.

Sex and the City 2 is insulting in too many ways to count--but Elizabeth Schulte says there's no contest about who takes the brunt of the abuse.
OH SURE, I know what you're thinking. Do I not have anything better to do than pick on Sex and the City 2? What was I expecting, insightful political commentary? A feminist classic? Don't I realize that no one likes this movie anyway?

But there's a very important reason to pile abuse on the latest incarnation of the Sex and the City franchise: It's incredibly racist.

First, a few admissions: I wasn't much of a fan of the TV show, I don't care much about fashion, and I feel a little ripped off paying $30 for a pair of Vans. I do like comedy. I appreciated one of the common threads of the show--women are sexual beings, and they should be proud and confident about that fact.

The problem was that the characters were so self-absorbed and their lifestyles so removed from most people's that it was hard to care much about them or their sex lives.

In all fairness to the show, though, the movie is a hundred times worse. It creates a spine-chilling caricature of something that was already a caricature to begin with--replete with an endless litany of awful one-liners ("You knew when I married you I was more Coco Chanel than coq au vin") and slow-motion shots of Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and that uptight one, all wearing implausible designer clothes and shoes.

Review: Movies

Sex and the City 2, written and directed by Michael Patrick King, starring Cynthia Nixon, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall and Kristin Davis.

The hope is that the moviemakers are trying to tell us that they have a sense of humor and know this is a really, really stupid movie. A couple times, I actually thought that Sarah Jessica Parker looked right at me and the other people texting in the audience, winked, and said, "Yeah, I know this isn't funny, but I'm making a bazillion dollars off of it. At least."

But there are just so many things to hate about this movie. The scene where the two mothers of the group, Miranda and Charlotte, toast "all the women who don't have help"--while sitting in their private bar in a luxury hotel room. And the portrayal of people who don't have children, symbolized by Carrie and Big, as selfish, spoiled and living without purpose. The repeated shots of Miranda's bra-less nanny (they point it out in the movie, it's not just me) jumping and bouncing and jumping didn't help much.

And if you're a woman older than 40--or, god forbid, over 50--who thought it was okay to get older, since that is, after all, what happens...forget about it. Samantha's character is obsessed with beating aging, and has a suitcase of pills and treatments to prove that she can turn back the dreaded clock. If you like menopause jokes, this is your movie.

But I have to say--in the contest for who are the most maligned and insulted people in this movie, it's Arabs and Muslims, hands down.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THIS FILM runs the gamut of movie racism--from the "Gee, aren't these foreigners and their foreign ways so funny and mysterious" racism of Old Tinsel Town, to the "Be very afraid, Islam is a danger to us all" of today's "war on terror"-obsessed Hollywood.

The premise of the movie is that Samantha has procured an all-expenses-paid trip for the four friends to Abu Dhabi, where a wealthy sheik wants her to promote his obscenely lavish hotel. They start the trip by being given their own white half-a-million-dollar Maybach sedan and a personal servant.

Miranda declares "Abu Dhabi do!" (I swear I'm not making this up), and they're on their way. Channeling the stupidity of an old racist Bob Hope harem movie, they get aboard camels and investigate the local customs. Here come Arab stereotypes as old as Hollywood itself--and don't forget the flying carpet reference.

Carrie marvels as a woman wearing a niqab eats French fries, and Samantha complains about having to cover up her tiny wardrobe, out of respect for the customs and beliefs of the people who live in the country she's visiting. Carrie muses about the woman in the niqab, "It's like they don't want them to have a voice."

Carrie is also surprised to learn that her personal servant waits three months--the time it takes to save up enough money--to see his wife in India. Carrie concludes from his story (again, I have to say: I kid you not) that maybe it's okay if she and her husband Big take time off from each other and live separately for two days each week. What a relief--I was worried that Carrie might be thinking about someone else's troubles for a nanosecond.

"The girls" go out on the town to a karaoke bar, complete with belly dancers, where they, in all seriousness, sing (really, really, really--I couldn't make this up) the 1970s feminist anthem "I Am Woman." Women in the audience cheer as the four belt out "I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman." And the men seem to like it, too--as they lift up their shirts and grind to the music.

It gets worse from there. Samantha meets a hunky Danish architect at the bar and makes a date. That date, of course, ends with Samantha getting arrested for indecency at the beach. She's released, but the incident forces the four to leave the country in a hurry.

And then, just when you think it's an impossibility, the movie gets even worse. The women find themselves in a local market, where Samantha--now dressed in short shorts and a halter top--is crawling on the ground to pick up the contents of her purse that spilled out after a fight with a shop owner. Menacing Arab men surround her and yell at her as she picks up rolls of condoms off the ground and brandishes them.

"The girls" are given sanctuary by some local women, who are part of a book club reading Suzanne Somers' new anti-aging book and who share with them their love of fashion, stripping off their abayas to reveal their Dior. Sisterhood is indeed powerful, as these women share the solidarity in their love of overpriced garments.

They narrowly escape, hidden beneath traditional clothing they've borrowed from the local women, but not before Carrie catches a cab by showing a little leg.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

IT'S MADCAP and crazy, and we're all supposed to be laughing. But there's absolutely nothing funny about characterizing Arab men as religious zealots who corner women in the street. The makers of this movie want it both ways--they want to make fun of Islamic culture and joke about "burqinis" by the pool, and say it's just a joke, and then they want to wax introspectively about women having a "voice." It's Islamophobia wrapped in bad comedy, and also in fake feminism.

When they criticize Arab culture, they're standing on thin ice (in torturously high heels, I might add). The liberated women of Sex and the City are little better than right-winger Lynne Cheney--who demanded the war in Afghanistan because the U.S. was supposedly fighting for women's liberation. Cheney got her war, and the Sex and the City crew got to make their racist jokes, but nobody is getting liberated.

What lays beneath all of Samantha's "You can't tell me what to do" antics is just plain anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia. Maybe she should open a newspaper and read about women in France who view their right to wear the hijab as a question of religious and personal freedom and are protesting the government's ban.

Furthermore, Samantha's insistence that having sex "just like men do" and "dressing any way she wants" is the beginning and end of her freedom does a disservice to any idea of women's liberation. Sexual freedom is one aspect to women's liberation, but anyone serious about emancipation knows that it needs to embrace things like economic equality and reproductive rights.

But Samantha and her friends think that American women are already liberated in this so-called post-feminist world--since they have high-powered jobs and penthouse apartments and other women to order around in their offices and homes. Their experiences speak for a tiny minority of women.

Maybe there's a better ending to this movie, in which the Arab women in the market, or Charlotte's poor nanny for that matter, sit these four down and explain a few things to them about why there's more to life than shoes and handbags--and could you give us some of the money from that Louis Vuitton so we could buy some really sturdy picket signs?

You gals go have some cocktails. We'll throw off the chains.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/06/11/since-when-is-racism-funny

Hollywood's big whitewash

The film industry seems to think it's good business to cast white actors to play ethnically Asian characters. Sarah Levy explains how antiracists are responding.

AT THE same time that the state of Arizona is making being non-white a crime, Hollywood is essentially endorsing an all-white America with two new films, The Last Airbender and Prince of Persia. But grassroots struggles are emerging to challenge these "whitewashing" efforts on behalf of the film industry.

Opening July 2, Paramount Pictures' movie The Last Airbender is based on the popular children's cartoon television series about a group of Asian and Inuit martial artists, Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The series is noticeable for its widespread and genuine incorporation of Inuit and Korean culture, including (animated) costume design, written language, landscapes, philosophy, spirituality and even eating utensils--many fans see it as an "evocative...re-imagining of ancient Asia."

However, when it comes to the movie adaptation, more noticeable than its feature length or use of actors instead of animation is the film's choice of cast: dominantly white, as opposed to the ethnically Asian characters depicted in the cartoon.

In fact, three of the four main characters in the movie are white--Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone--and while the fourth is played by Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire, the directors had originally wanted Jesse McCartney (white) to play the role. Patel's character also happens to be the antagonist.

Rightfully outraged, a largely Internet-based grassroots coalition (mainly consisting of fans of the TV series) has organized to challenge Hollywood's attempt to erase the face of minorities from its screens. For starters, they are calling for a boycott of the film.

"People need to realize that recasting Asian actors as white actors is institutionalized discrimination," said Loraine Sammy, public relations coordinator for Racebending.com, a Web site that has attracted over 6,000 supporters since it was formed in 2008 with the intention of spreading the boycott.

As of now, the petition to Protest the Unethical Casting of The Last Airbender, directed to the president of Paramount Film Group, has upwards of 8,500 signatures.

It's particularly harmful to minority children, said Sammy, who are being told that "white s the norm, even in a [fantasy] world that is Asian-based."

Asian American artist Derek Kirk Kim, author of Same Difference and Other Stories, created a petition of industry professionals who plan to boycott the film. In a 2009 blog entry, Kim wrote:

What if someone made a "fantasy" movie in which the entire world was built around African culture? Everyone is wearing ancient African clothes, African hats, eating traditional African food, writing in an African language, living in African homes, all encompassed in an African landscape...but everyone is white.

How offensive, insulting and disrespectful would that be toward Africans and African Americans? How much more offensive would it be if only the heroes were white and all the villains and background characters were African American?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

UNFORTUNATELY, WHEN it opens, Airbender will not stand alone in its fashion of "whitewashing"--the new term for having white actors play the roles of non-white characters. This past week saw the release of the video-game-turned-feature-film Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, starring Jake Gyllenhaal as, fans claimed, the clearly and should-have-been Iranian main character.

Amid the current Obama era of "colorblindness," this seems to be the new form of blackface--it's as if Hollywood is thinking, "Rather than have white people pretend to be other ethnicities, let's just pretend that everyone is actually white."

In this bipolar time, when race is supposed to no longer matter, but you can simultaneously get pulled over for "looking illegal," Hollywood's blatant racism makes clear that they don't just want viewers to look past a person's race, but to look past the non-white races entirely.

As Gene Yang, National Book Award nominee and author of the graphic novel American Born Chinese, described it, the casting is like "a white Asian fetishist's wet dream. All the Asian culture they want, without any of the Asian people."

Luckily, the power of Internet organizing makes it look like by the time the movie hits theaters, Airbender will be met with a loud voice of dissent. As Racebender.com states:

We know we cannot change the casting of The Last Airbender, but working on this project [will not be] the end of our movement. We will continue to monitor other projects in Hollywood and advocate on behalf of artists of color. This is a pivotal moment. We can help Hollywood see that Americans care about treating everyone fairly--and about showing our children that prejudice shouldn't profit.

Sex and the City 2 is insulting in too many ways to count--but Elizabeth Schulte says there's no contest about who takes the brunt of the abuse.
OH SURE, I know what you're thinking. Do I not have anything better to do than pick on Sex and the City 2? What was I expecting, insightful political commentary? A feminist classic? Don't I realize that no one likes this movie anyway?

But there's a very important reason to pile abuse on the latest incarnation of the Sex and the City franchise: It's incredibly racist.

First, a few admissions: I wasn't much of a fan of the TV show, I don't care much about fashion, and I feel a little ripped off paying $30 for a pair of Vans. I do like comedy. I appreciated one of the common threads of the show--women are sexual beings, and they should be proud and confident about that fact.

The problem was that the characters were so self-absorbed and their lifestyles so removed from most people's that it was hard to care much about them or their sex lives.

In all fairness to the show, though, the movie is a hundred times worse. It creates a spine-chilling caricature of something that was already a caricature to begin with--replete with an endless litany of awful one-liners ("You knew when I married you I was more Coco Chanel than coq au vin") and slow-motion shots of Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and that uptight one, all wearing implausible designer clothes and shoes.

Review: Movies

Sex and the City 2, written and directed by Michael Patrick King, starring Cynthia Nixon, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall and Kristin Davis.

The hope is that the moviemakers are trying to tell us that they have a sense of humor and know this is a really, really stupid movie. A couple times, I actually thought that Sarah Jessica Parker looked right at me and the other people texting in the audience, winked, and said, "Yeah, I know this isn't funny, but I'm making a bazillion dollars off of it. At least."

But there are just so many things to hate about this movie. The scene where the two mothers of the group, Miranda and Charlotte, toast "all the women who don't have help"--while sitting in their private bar in a luxury hotel room. And the portrayal of people who don't have children, symbolized by Carrie and Big, as selfish, spoiled and living without purpose. The repeated shots of Miranda's bra-less nanny (they point it out in the movie, it's not just me) jumping and bouncing and jumping didn't help much.

And if you're a woman older than 40--or, god forbid, over 50--who thought it was okay to get older, since that is, after all, what happens...forget about it. Samantha's character is obsessed with beating aging, and has a suitcase of pills and treatments to prove that she can turn back the dreaded clock. If you like menopause jokes, this is your movie.

But I have to say--in the contest for who are the most maligned and insulted people in this movie, it's Arabs and Muslims, hands down.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THIS FILM runs the gamut of movie racism--from the "Gee, aren't these foreigners and their foreign ways so funny and mysterious" racism of Old Tinsel Town, to the "Be very afraid, Islam is a danger to us all" of today's "war on terror"-obsessed Hollywood.

The premise of the movie is that Samantha has procured an all-expenses-paid trip for the four friends to Abu Dhabi, where a wealthy sheik wants her to promote his obscenely lavish hotel. They start the trip by being given their own white half-a-million-dollar Maybach sedan and a personal servant.

Miranda declares "Abu Dhabi do!" (I swear I'm not making this up), and they're on their way. Channeling the stupidity of an old racist Bob Hope harem movie, they get aboard camels and investigate the local customs. Here come Arab stereotypes as old as Hollywood itself--and don't forget the flying carpet reference.

Carrie marvels as a woman wearing a niqab eats French fries, and Samantha complains about having to cover up her tiny wardrobe, out of respect for the customs and beliefs of the people who live in the country she's visiting. Carrie muses about the woman in the niqab, "It's like they don't want them to have a voice."

Carrie is also surprised to learn that her personal servant waits three months--the time it takes to save up enough money--to see his wife in India. Carrie concludes from his story (again, I have to say: I kid you not) that maybe it's okay if she and her husband Big take time off from each other and live separately for two days each week. What a relief--I was worried that Carrie might be thinking about someone else's troubles for a nanosecond.

"The girls" go out on the town to a karaoke bar, complete with belly dancers, where they, in all seriousness, sing (really, really, really--I couldn't make this up) the 1970s feminist anthem "I Am Woman." Women in the audience cheer as the four belt out "I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman." And the men seem to like it, too--as they lift up their shirts and grind to the music.

It gets worse from there. Samantha meets a hunky Danish architect at the bar and makes a date. That date, of course, ends with Samantha getting arrested for indecency at the beach. She's released, but the incident forces the four to leave the country in a hurry.

And then, just when you think it's an impossibility, the movie gets even worse. The women find themselves in a local market, where Samantha--now dressed in short shorts and a halter top--is crawling on the ground to pick up the contents of her purse that spilled out after a fight with a shop owner. Menacing Arab men surround her and yell at her as she picks up rolls of condoms off the ground and brandishes them.

"The girls" are given sanctuary by some local women, who are part of a book club reading Suzanne Somers' new anti-aging book and who share with them their love of fashion, stripping off their abayas to reveal their Dior. Sisterhood is indeed powerful, as these women share the solidarity in their love of overpriced garments.

They narrowly escape, hidden beneath traditional clothing they've borrowed from the local women, but not before Carrie catches a cab by showing a little leg.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

IT'S MADCAP and crazy, and we're all supposed to be laughing. But there's absolutely nothing funny about characterizing Arab men as religious zealots who corner women in the street. The makers of this movie want it both ways--they want to make fun of Islamic culture and joke about "burqinis" by the pool, and say it's just a joke, and then they want to wax introspectively about women having a "voice." It's Islamophobia wrapped in bad comedy, and also in fake feminism.

When they criticize Arab culture, they're standing on thin ice (in torturously high heels, I might add). The liberated women of Sex and the City are little better than right-winger Lynne Cheney--who demanded the war in Afghanistan because the U.S. was supposedly fighting for women's liberation. Cheney got her war, and the Sex and the City crew got to make their racist jokes, but nobody is getting liberated.

What lays beneath all of Samantha's "You can't tell me what to do" antics is just plain anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia. Maybe she should open a newspaper and read about women in France who view their right to wear the hijab as a question of religious and personal freedom and are protesting the government's ban.

Furthermore, Samantha's insistence that having sex "just like men do" and "dressing any way she wants" is the beginning and end of her freedom does a disservice to any idea of women's liberation. Sexual freedom is one aspect to women's liberation, but anyone serious about emancipation knows that it needs to embrace things like economic equality and reproductive rights.

But Samantha and her friends think that American women are already liberated in this so-called post-feminist world--since they have high-powered jobs and penthouse apartments and other women to order around in their offices and homes. Their experiences speak for a tiny minority of women.

Maybe there's a better ending to this movie, in which the Arab women in the market, or Charlotte's poor nanny for that matter, sit these four down and explain a few things to them about why there's more to life than shoes and handbags--and could you give us some of the money from that Louis Vuitton so we could buy some really sturdy picket signs?

You gals go have some cocktails. We'll throw off the chains.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/06/11/since-when-is-racism-funny

Hollywood's big whitewash

The film industry seems to think it's good business to cast white actors to play ethnically Asian characters. Sarah Levy explains how antiracists are responding.

AT THE same time that the state of Arizona is making being non-white a crime, Hollywood is essentially endorsing an all-white America with two new films, The Last Airbender and Prince of Persia. But grassroots struggles are emerging to challenge these "whitewashing" efforts on behalf of the film industry.

Opening July 2, Paramount Pictures' movie The Last Airbender is based on the popular children's cartoon television series about a group of Asian and Inuit martial artists, Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The series is noticeable for its widespread and genuine incorporation of Inuit and Korean culture, including (animated) costume design, written language, landscapes, philosophy, spirituality and even eating utensils--many fans see it as an "evocative...re-imagining of ancient Asia."

However, when it comes to the movie adaptation, more noticeable than its feature length or use of actors instead of animation is the film's choice of cast: dominantly white, as opposed to the ethnically Asian characters depicted in the cartoon.

In fact, three of the four main characters in the movie are white--Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone--and while the fourth is played by Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire, the directors had originally wanted Jesse McCartney (white) to play the role. Patel's character also happens to be the antagonist.

Rightfully outraged, a largely Internet-based grassroots coalition (mainly consisting of fans of the TV series) has organized to challenge Hollywood's attempt to erase the face of minorities from its screens. For starters, they are calling for a boycott of the film.

"People need to realize that recasting Asian actors as white actors is institutionalized discrimination," said Loraine Sammy, public relations coordinator for Racebending.com, a Web site that has attracted over 6,000 supporters since it was formed in 2008 with the intention of spreading the boycott.

As of now, the petition to Protest the Unethical Casting of The Last Airbender, directed to the president of Paramount Film Group, has upwards of 8,500 signatures.

It's particularly harmful to minority children, said Sammy, who are being told that "white s the norm, even in a [fantasy] world that is Asian-based."

Asian American artist Derek Kirk Kim, author of Same Difference and Other Stories, created a petition of industry professionals who plan to boycott the film. In a 2009 blog entry, Kim wrote:

What if someone made a "fantasy" movie in which the entire world was built around African culture? Everyone is wearing ancient African clothes, African hats, eating traditional African food, writing in an African language, living in African homes, all encompassed in an African landscape...but everyone is white.

How offensive, insulting and disrespectful would that be toward Africans and African Americans? How much more offensive would it be if only the heroes were white and all the villains and background characters were African American?

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UNFORTUNATELY, WHEN it opens, Airbender will not stand alone in its fashion of "whitewashing"--the new term for having white actors play the roles of non-white characters. This past week saw the release of the video-game-turned-feature-film Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, starring Jake Gyllenhaal as, fans claimed, the clearly and should-have-been Iranian main character.

Amid the current Obama era of "colorblindness," this seems to be the new form of blackface--it's as if Hollywood is thinking, "Rather than have white people pretend to be other ethnicities, let's just pretend that everyone is actually white."

In this bipolar time, when race is supposed to no longer matter, but you can simultaneously get pulled over for "looking illegal," Hollywood's blatant racism makes clear that they don't just want viewers to look past a person's race, but to look past the non-white races entirely.

As Gene Yang, National Book Award nominee and author of the graphic novel American Born Chinese, described it, the casting is like "a white Asian fetishist's wet dream. All the Asian culture they want, without any of the Asian people."

Luckily, the power of Internet organizing makes it look like by the time the movie hits theaters, Airbender will be met with a loud voice of dissent. As Racebender.com states:

We know we cannot change the casting of The Last Airbender, but working on this project [will not be] the end of our movement. We will continue to monitor other projects in Hollywood and advocate on behalf of artists of color. This is a pivotal moment. We can help Hollywood see that Americans care about treating everyone fairly--and about showing our children that prejudice shouldn't profit.

It's thanks to this thread that I had a "hmmmm...." moment while enjoying the A-team. (the new movie)

It happened in the first 20 minutes, maybe the first ten.

Spoiler Alert! Click to show or hide

Hannibal Smith and Templeton "Face" Peck have already been introduced to the audience. Face is in trouble and Hannibal is running desperately to his location when he sees Bosco "B.A." Barrabas driving his signature black van down the same lonely Mexican road that Hannibal is running towards. Hannibal get's BA to stop and pulls out a gun.

BA (who for those who missed this campy classic of the 80's is black) Looks disbelieving at Hannibal (who is Caucasian) and asks:

"Is this Opposite Day? are you serious are you jacking me?"

I had to think, the Irony of this scene (hence any humour value) comes from a stereotype.

An Asian-American gentlemen named Mr. Li recently applied for a U.S. passport so that he could travel. After submitting all of the appropriate paperwork, he got back the following letter from the U.S. State Department:

It's thanks to this thread that I had a "hmmmm...." moment while enjoying the A-team. (the new movie)

It happened in the first 20 minutes, maybe the first ten.

Spoiler Alert! Click to show or hide

Hannibal Smith and Templeton "Face" Peck have already been introduced to the audience. Face is in trouble and Hannibal is running desperately to his location when he sees Bosco "B.A." Barrabas driving his signature black van down the same lonely Mexican road that Hannibal is running towards. Hannibal get's BA to stop and pulls out a gun.

BA (who for those who missed this campy classic of the 80's is black) Looks disbelieving at Hannibal (who is Caucasian) and asks:

"Is this Opposite Day? are you serious are you jacking me?"

I had to think, the Irony of this scene (hence any humour value) comes from a stereotype.

As I said. Hmmm....

Why did they even change the actors? The only one who is already dead is Hannibal(George Peppard).

Unforgiven was pretty good. I actually liked the new A-team. Liam Neesan can be hit or miss as an actor depending on what he's given to work with (compare Shindler's list to Darkman) but he give a certain gravitas to the role that I liked. The new faceman delivered as well and that's saying something given that when I was younger I was a HUGE fan of the original BSG Starbuck, and the A-team's Face.

Mildly related to this subject. (stereotypes anyway) though I'm not entirely sure Hollywood is to blame for this event.

It happened to, quite literally, a friend of a friend. More precisely it happened to co-worker of my BEST friend. For brevity in this story we will call said co worker "John".

Now John, in a lot of ways, matches the Canadian Identity Stereotype. He's polite to the point of having a good chance of apologising for his clumsiness if you step on his foot. He thinks about his words and tries not use all the 'bad' ones that might hurt other people's feelings. and he loves his Tim Horton's coffee. (oh and he's what racially obessed types would call white. He'd probably call himself Italian if he had to make a choice other than Canadian)

John was traveling in the southern USA, I forget weather it was vacation or some NAFTA approved contract work and I don't think I was actually told what state south of the Mason-Dixon line it was...

Anyway, John's on a long car journey and starts to feel that there is too much blood in his caffiene system. There being few Tim Horton's in the US, he decides to stop at a 7-11. He's mildly annoyed to see that someone has placed their coat and bag right on top of the section of shelves next to the slurpee machine that are meant for the use of those preparing a cup of coffee. Gingerly, he moves the offending items just enough to the side that he can access the coffee machine sideways (his back now towards the slurpee machine) and begins preparing his coffee.

From somewhere in the back, the owner of the coat and bag comes up and before using the slurpee machine casually elbows John in the back to move him out of the way. John is a little nonplussed he turns around to find a dark skinned young man of around 18 years of age maybe less, wearing baggy pants, a sideways ballcap atop a bandana and other clothes to match.

"uh.. what.. why did you do that, I'd have move if you asked?" says a confused John.

"Yo! I'm a NIGGER man and THAT's how we DO it in the HOOD!" the youth responds.

John is floored. I think he forgot that the youth before him wasn't one of his son's cohorts or perhaps the blatent violation of all he'd been taught about being nice to others confused him a bit. And remember Bob still hadn't replenished the stock in his caffiene system.

"You're a... you called yourself a What? why would you DO that? That's stupid to call yourself a nigger..." Bob began what was probably a thirty or forty second rant about perpetuating stereotypes, and self respect and how the n-word shouldn't be used. During the course of which he actually says said word about half a dozen times. The thesis of his rant is that that it's Stupid to use the word self-referentially but it doesn't change the fact that he's also using the word stupid several time too.

Suddenly, a very LARGE black man. (Probably, smaller than Bob Sap), stands up from behind the merchandise aisle he'd apparently been stocking and starts marching towards John, and boy does he look "Pissed". John friends himself confronted with a very large muscular and angry black man at the very moment he's finished uttering a racial epithet (although not with malicious intent) a half dozen times.

This third new participant in the conversation charges up to John and the youth...

...And grabs the youth by the scruff of the neck. Hauls him to the door, and throws him outside. Pointing at the youth, he shouts

"YOU'RE NOT HELPING!"

Then comes back and actually apologises for the youth to a nonplussed John. Who in turn is more than happy to apologise back.